St. Mary's video

Portfolio Showcase

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the Portfolio Showcase at Park Center. I saw so many great portfolios and it really gave me some inspiration on how to do mine. Also, by looking at these I can see how much time and effort people put into these. This tells me that I better start mine now and organize it well because this is my future and I want to produce something I am proud of. Looking through there work I noticed they put in some things I have already done which is good to know that I can use those as artifacts. I noticed one student did his portfolio on a website. This was intriguing because it was labeled very clear and easy to find artifacts and his resume. Also a positive side to putting it on the web is if you make a mistake or a typo it is very easy to change it and not mention it is easy access. With this being a technological century I thought his was very well done. Some good advice the students gave me was to save EVERYTHING! and add pictures. Pictures can enhance the message you are trying to convey, espically if someone is just skimming through a picture will grab their attention. Thanks to Yang for taking pictures at St. Mary's I now have a lot of pictures to choose from. It wasn't something I would have thought about but now I can see how valueable it is. I'm glad I went to the showcase because those kids have been in my position and knew what they were doing so it was good to get advice from them.

Ho! Ho! Ho! Santa is on the go

This was our last week at St. Mary and I am really going to miss the kids. This was such a great experience to be our in a real setting working with the children. It was nice to have this experience because now I know what to expect. Sometimes when we got to St. Mary's we had to change our plans based on weather, number of children, or the limited space and this is what teachers have to deal with on a regular basis. You need to be flexible and be able to adjust and adapt to different situations and that is what we learned there. During this lab we had a Christmas theme and worked with the pre-k students. Professor Yang introduced us to some new toys. These gadgets kept the kids entertained for quite some time. What you would do is have these little cones about 5 of them and spread them out and then the actual device would call out a number or color and you would have to "stomp" it and it would register and go to the next color. This was good for pre-k because they are learning colors and number so it re-enforced it to them. After that we read and book to the class and then went to the gym. In the gym we tied jump ropes together and made a sleigh, the kids grabbed on and we put objects in hula hoops that were placed on the floor. We pretended like the children were the reindeer and Santa and we had to drop the gift off to the houses which were the hula hoops. After that we played a tag game and then it was time to go. This semester at St. Mary's went by so fast and I am glad I was a part of it and really enjoyed it there.

Cotton Eye Joe!

This week at St. Mary's was different from all the rest. This time was group was assigned to clean and organize the closet area. Seeing as it was toward the end of our time at St. Mary's other groups have organized the closet and there wasn't much left for us to do. So we basically wandered around and got to see all the different age groups instead of being with one all day. First I stayed in the gym and played basketball with some of the kids. And then I got to watch my peers teach to the kids. This was a nice experience because everyone has different teaching styles and there is not one right way to teach. I got to see how they used different strategies and saw what worked for them and what didn't. Next I went to hang out with the kids in the pre - k room. I love working with them because they are sponges. Anything you do they will do so it is important to keep everything positive and fun with them. Some were coloring pictures of turkeys for the Thanksgiving day theme and colored them in traditional turkey colors like yellow, orange, and red. There was only one kid who colored outside of the "normal" fall colors. He colored his green because he said it was his favorite color. I thought this was awesome! He wasn't sticking to what everyone else was doing and did his own thing. Some of the children at the table who noticed this sort of frowned upon him and his pitcure because it wasn't like theirs. As a teacher it is important to embrace and support a creative envirnoment so kids are not cookie cut outs of one another. Especially at a young age you want to see their creativity shine. Our group had the honor of coming up with the closing song. We chose Cotton Eye Joe. This is a great song because the movements are simple and the song is upbeat and catchy. Even if the kids were not moving at the same pace they were still moving and that is what you want to see, kids just being active.